Former Intel Employee Pleads Guilty for Data Theft

By Pradeep Chandrasekaran on 04/09/2012

On Friday last, former Intel employee Biswamohan Pani pleaded guilty of data theft charges after he allegedly stole $1 billion worth of trade secrets from Intel. Intel has reviewed the data that was stolen and adjusted the value of information to be between $200 and $400 million. The former Intel employee was working at the company’s Hudson facility several years ago before leaving for a job at rival company, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). In between his shift of job, there were a few overlapping days where he had access to Intel data while working for AMD already. It was at this time that he allegedly stole valuable information about the manufacturing and design of Intel’s Itanium microprocessor. Federal agents who searched his home, found the related documents. AMD which has co-operated with the investigation from start reiterated that they did not instruct Pani to do as he did and did not even know that he had the alleged information. Now that Pani has pleaded guilty to the charges, he could be facing up to 20 years in prison per fraud count when sentencing begins on August 8th.